Main ideas and research focus for biomass work in Biovalue

The overall vision is to facilitate a diverse and flexible biomass production sector which can supply biorefineries with a wide variety of agricultural crops and crop residues tailored for biorefinery purposes and produced under sustainable conditions, optimising land use and reducing the costs of production and transport. The approach will define new crop production systems designed to increase resource use efficiency significantly by increasing plant diversity and the length of the crop growing season. Strong links between fundamental plant research and agricultural innovation will be established.

The work builds on the concept that a reliable supply of biomass is a fundamental prerequisite if we are to achieve economic and environmental sustainability in the future biorefineries.

Objectives

Increase the quantity and quality of biomass raw materials available for biorefining by development of innovative multi-purpose production systems, embracing annual and perennial plant species and exploiting the potential of genotypic differences.

Increase resource use efficiency by extending the crop growing season and exploring plant complementarity.

To understand the fundamental interactions between genotype, environment and management factors that can be exploited to sustainably intensify the biomass yield per unit land area and to deliver tailored biomass qualities for biorefineries.